I think it is universal and paradoxical that performing is about vulnerability (its paradoxical because we love performers who look comfortable.) Now in improvisation the vulnerability is partially about the self revealing aspects that occur because you have not planned what you will perform … We constantly reveal how we think, how we feel, what we imagine.

I saw the floating figures of Simon Yates personifying the artist:

Simon Yates has a collection of his selves drifting around the Mori Gallery (Day street Sydney).

Personas of bamboo sticks and tissue paper suspend from helium party balloons, and are propelled through the space by small motors in their groins.

They remind me of my frail father, ensconced with dementia in a nursing home.

They could also be Mawson, bereft of his skin.

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I find this reference to other work by Simon, at Grey Matter,

‘THE PALACE OF EXAGGERATION & EVERYTHING’

4 November – 26 November 2000

Opening Night: Friday 3 November 2000 from 6pm to 8.30pm:

Grey Matter Contemporary Art is pleased to present ‘SCIENCE IN ACTION’, a solo exhibition by Simon Yates on the ceiling throughout the gallery. In previous exhibitions Simon Yates’ home-made machines and models have acted as humble metaphors for the nuts and bolts of the world and reality. For this show at Grey Matter Yates’ kinetic, optical and psychedelic works form what could be described as his own bric-a-brac version of Superstring Theory.

…Grey Matter Contemporary Art was an independent art gallery (1999-2001) based in a converted residential apartment above a Chinese restaurant in Glebe, Sydney, Australia. The exhibition program featured Australian and overseas artists and guest curators with an emphasis on progressive and speculative contemporary art. The in-house curatorial style was exaggerated and self-reflexive and approached exhibition making as a form of experimental research rather than as an end-product of research. This included exploratory exhibition design, the inclusion of curatorial red-herrings, and unconventional zoning methods. …